Dave had not been enjoying his reincarnation at all.
When he first reincarnated and retained his memories he thought he was going to have an amazing life. Worst case scenario he would still be ahead simply by already having gone through school and college once before meaning he would do great academically. Getting a head start is the best way to win the race after all, but he had only been disappointed.
He was extremely average in every single way. Now this didn’t sound too terrible, but what made it even worse was this was an alternate Earth where genetic variability was much greater than on the previous Earth.
What does this mean? It means that the most beautiful people in this world are much more beautiful than the ones in his former life. The most athletic people were much more capable than any world champion athlete in his former life. Think along the lines of super soldier serum without actually needing any serum, pure genetics. Some people were amazing geniuses far surpassing Einstein.
This all meant that being absolutely average in every way was extremely rare and it wasn’t the good kind of rare. He could not excel in anything and even his advantages academically didn’t mean much when there were even multiple people in his school as smart as Einstein. His previous life as an OK college student wasn’t going to make him competitive with Einstein.
As for physically. The only good thing was he was 6 feet tall so he had that going for him. However he was skinny fat because he could barely put on muscle only fat leaving him with skinny limbs and a slightly pudgy midsection. He should know, his father definitely forced him to try.
Why you ask? His father was one of the genetic extremes. Specifically in the physical department. He was extremely good at sports to the point where he was a professional MMA fighter. Imagine a bunch of guys that took a super soldier serum and had a job punching each others lights out. That was his father and he was one of the more successful ones.
This sounds great until you find out that his father gave up on him when he didn’t start excelling at sports by the time he hit his teens. He was also an alcoholic that sometimes beat his wife and more frequently his son in frustration.
It got bad enough to the point where eventually his mother left leaving him alone with his abusive father. It didn’t take long for his father to find a young hot new wife given his status as a professional MMA fighter and the decent wealth that came along with it. Also he could be superficially charming at least for a while hiding the miserable abusive asshole he truly was deep down.
He didn’t want to badmouth her though. Although with her age she was more like a big sister than a mother given the mere 5 years between them, she was actually much closer to his age than she was to his father’s. She was very hot, but rather naive which made sense given how she ended up marrying his father without realising how much of an abusive douchebag he was. She had always treated him well enough though.
Due to all of this his life was not great. He was ok at school, but nothing special. He was terrible at sports. He wasn’t attractive. He was abandoned with his abusive dad by his mom. All this had lead to him being the most background of background characters in his life. People didn’t hate him….well maybe his father did…however they didn’t like him either. He wasn’t popular. He was 17 and had yet to have anything even close to a girlfriend while he had no real friends just some acquaintances.
He had tried, but eventually when life kept beating him down he started giving up. He ended up just taking the beatings and escaping using games, movies, tv shows and books. Oh and porn… let’s not mention that one. He had given up on dreams regarding his second life years ago. He knew he wouldn’t achieve anything and his reincarnation was nothing more than some elaborate cosmic joke being played on him of that he was sure.
If anyone actually had intentionally reincarnated him with his memories intact he cursed them not just for the life they put him in, but also for letting him keep his memories which had lead to years of hopes that it meant something and he was destined for greatness. He sometimes had to laugh at those stupid thoughts he used to have. Those days were long gone though as he just lived day by day hoping to survive another day without either his father accidentally killing him or him deciding to end his own miserable life and hoping he wouldn't keep his memories next go around.
The benefit was when he was holed up in his room without making any noise he tended to receive fewer beatings. Out of sight out of mine he guessed. At least his stepmother was kind enough to bring his serving of dinner to his room and all things said she was a rather good cook. He had yet to be disappointed in a meal she had made in the years she had lived with them.
It was 4 AM and he had been up late binge watching the new season of a show he liked that just released earlier that day and had just shut down his computer crashing on his bed in exhaustion to catch a few hours of sleep before he had to get ready for class. It had only been a short while after he closed his eyes when the unexpected happened.
[Ding]
[Installing NTR System]
[1%]
[32%]
[68%]
[100%]
[Ding]
[NTR System installed successfully]
[NTR System initialising]
"What?" Dave mumbled in confusion his sleepiness slowly clearing with multiple bells and alerts happening out of nowhere.
For the average to stay the same, while also having lots of people far above average, you would need some sort of counterbalance. In other words a large number of people slightly below average in some aspects, or a smaller number of more extreme sub-humans (someone at the level of Homer Simpson in terms of mental ability for example) among the population.
As mentioned by Bort, for a person to be average in a place with almost superhuman, there has to be people a lot worse to balance things out. So either the MC isn't as bad off as he makes it sound or 'average' is not average at all but well below.
If you are average in every way while others all almost excel at one thing even if they are below on average in other things you are worse off. Specialisation has for more value in society than being a jack of all trades, but master of none.
@prognastat That’s fair, but this also means he should be better than other people at some things (not thier specialties). Like in a world full of people with stats, if the almost superhumans have like 10 in one stat and much less in other stats, that’s great. If our MC has 5 in all stats, sure he won’t be any good compared to the 10s, but he is surely better than the people with 3s and 4s in any particular stat. From the MC moaning, it comes across as him not being good/capable at anything and has just kinda given up on life. Sure he won’t have an easy time, but being Jack of all can be useful on its own sometimes.
@LollipoPReapeR Right, but people don't go into fields they aren't good in. Again society focuses on specialisation not generalisation. People go into fields they are good at. The competition in every field is with the best in that field not those that are below average in the field, those tend to go to compete in a field they are more suited for.
@prognastat Heh, that’s the ideal….. But I get your point.